Zola is better than mages against the flying eyes due to higher HP/Defense/Range than most mages of equal rarity and the fact they have MR if I'm not mistaken, her shots hit instantly instead of being a moderately slow fireball, and I can vouch for her viability in Crystal Keeper X and G (though mine is 50CC60 and not yet AW so she needs heal support; in X if she gets buffed by Uzume's skill she one-shots the masses of eyes, half of them don't even get one shot in). Most likely the other Gold+ Artillery officers are better in general but we don't have them (looking at the fact she doesn't get the extra range they do with AW due to Range down, though she gets attack speed up, and her skill just switches her to magic damage, where you could have a mage do that, though physical damage mostly and switch to magic vs. armored targets without switching out is good; then again I'm not sure what the other Artillery officers get)